


Skeletons and Us

by LetThereBeDestiel



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Best Friends, Boyfriends, Emotional Constipation, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Friends to Lovers, Halloween, Halloween Costumes, Haunted Houses, Idiots in Love, M/M, Spooky
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-31
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:41:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,718
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27309385
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LetThereBeDestiel/pseuds/LetThereBeDestiel
Summary: "This person I hate started a rumor that we're dating to get revenge at me but instead of freaking out you suggested just going with it, so now we're platonically romantic and everyone in school loves us as a couple."Or: Dean and Cas are being idiots while fighting for their lives.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 3
Kudos: 117





	Skeletons and Us

**THEN**

Dean saw her.

He saw her storm out of one people-packed room and into another, the emotion in her eyes (furious) so mortally contrary to the other faces in the room (drunk).

He didn’t realize he was in deep shit until her lioness eyes slid across the room, searching for prey, and landed on him.

“Him,” she called over the mayhem of the party, and people turned to look. She carved a path through them with sharp shoulders until she was standing in front of Dean, tears in her eyes, speaking loud enough for everyone to hear over the music. “He did this. He stole my boyfriend.”

She looked at Dean like he knew exactly what he’d done. Everyone else looked at him like he must’ve known what he’d done, otherwise he wouldn’t be getting yelled at.

“I’m sorry,” Dean said, reluctant, confused. He didn’t know what he’d done. He couldn’t recall stealing a boyfriend.

April tossed an indignant look over her shoulder, at the room she’d just burst out of, and shouldered her way past him to the exit.

**NOW**

“Tell them I’m wearing your sweater and watch them lose their minds.”

Dean glanced towards the passenger seat from the corner of his eye, pretending to adjust his fangs and the tie of his cape in the rearview mirror.

“You _are_ wearing my sweater.”

Cas ignored him and stepped out of the car, as if he could just get away with it. And he could.

Dean pushed himself off the driver’s seat and slammed the door. “Come on, boyfriend.” His tone became somewhat biting towards the last word.

Cas grimaced. “No need to say it like an insult.”

The lawn they were stepping onto was feral for a friendly neighborhood house, and littered with pieces of brain and ketchup. They climbed up the stairs leading to the haunted house and nudged the front door open. It creaked.

If not for the overwhelming volume of teen noises inside, this house would have been eerie. In the dark, the exterior looked decayed and untended. The interior looked like Dean’s nightmares about being ripped apart by hellhounds and going to hell.

“Neat,” he said. Cas was already turning away from him.

An array of skeletons wearing whimsical hats was scattered across the crowded room. It wasn’t supposed to be a party, but the local teens took over the place and somehow made it one.

Dean followed his best friend like a beacon in a sea of plastic beer cups washed in a red light emanating from lamps decorated with spider webs. Cas led to Charlie, who, dressed as a warrior queen, looked up and down the pair of them with visible suspicion.

“What’s up, Dracula and his assistant... Sweater Guy?”

Dean nodded his chin at Cas’ uncostumed outfit. “This guy thinks it’s lame to dress up when you’ve passed the tender age of five.”

Cas’ lip twitched. “It is lame to dress up when you’re past five.”

Charlie stepped closer to hear them over the crowd. Behind her was a flight of stairs leading to a second floor, white smoke snaking down the stairs from above. Dean wondered who owned the place; there didn’t seem to be anything to indicate someone actually lived here besides a few old furniture. Still, it was hard to imagine the space empty and unlived in while it was currently so filled with life and the musty smell of teenage sweat.

“But it’s perfectly mature to steal other people’s sweaters?” He countered.

“Yes.”

It wasn’t that strange for Cas to have his shirt; they spent almost every afternoon together. It wasn’t strange; but it was rude.

“Aww.” Charlie punched Cas’ arm lightly. “You guys are adorable.”

Apparently, they made for a pretty loveable couple. Sometimes they didn’t even have to try; anyone who saw them from aside and didn’t know them would never assume they were dating. But everyone knew they were, and interpreted their behavior accordingly. No one ever saw past it. Maybe they were just that convincing.

“I’m gonna go up to the second floor to check out the other rooms,” said Charlie. “You coming? I heard someone say they even changed the family pictures to creepy old black and white portraits. They really went all out with decorations this year.”

Dean glanced at his date. Cas was looking past Charlie, spaced out.

“We’ll catch up with you,” Dean said. Charlie disappeared, but Cas was still spacing out. Dean touched his elbow. “What’s up?” He worked to sound casual.

He desperately wanted to let his hand slip, fall into Cas’, and he knew he could. No one would think anything of it. The opposite; they would expect it. But it wouldn’t be real.

Even if it would be real for him. It wouldn’t be real for both of them.

Cas’ eyes refocused on the mass of bodies in front of him, but he didn’t move. “I’m eavesdropping.”

Dean looked around inconspicuously and found his target, a couple of students from their class talking over their cups.

“Some girl tried to hit on him,” said one.

“So?” said the other. Their voices barely carried over the noise in the room, but from Cas’ face, Dean couldn’t assume anything but that the conversation was about them.

“She didn’t realize he wasn’t available. Made a scene about it. Last year’s party. See what you miss when you’re playing board games with your family on Halloween instead of going out, Garth?”

This wasn’t accurate. When April had pointed at Dean and blamed him for stealing her boyfriend, they didn’t even know each other. Dean had gone into the other room to see who she was talking about and found Cas, not particularly concerned. He’d apologized, said the rumors would pass. That was when Dean suggested that instead of playing into her hands and panicking about what people would say, maybe they should to go with it.

“Come on.” Dean grabbed Cas’ hand and pulled this time. “Enough with rumors. As if it’s the first time you’re hearing them.”

They proceeded towards the stairs, but another classmate stopped them before they could make their escape.

“We’re playing Spin the Bottle,” Jo said and waved an empty plastic bottle at them. She wrapped an arm around Dean’s shoulder and pulled him in the other direction, leaning on him for support at the same time. “Whoa. The chandelier is spinning.”

Cas squinted his eyes at her. “Do they put something in the water?”

“Yeah, vodka,” Jo said. But when Dean looked up he saw that the chandelier really was swaying gently from side to side. It looked quite heavy. His eyes feel instinctively on the people standing below it, but they seemed unaware of the crystal construction wobbling above their heads.

It was probably fine.

“You coming?” Jo asked and pulled Dean’s shoulder.

“Spin the Bottle isn’t really a Halloween activity,” he pointed out, but it didn’t have much effect, being said while he was being dragged to the center of the room, where a circle was forming right below the chandelier. Cas had no choice but to follow.

They sat a few people away from one another, and Jo spun the bottle. Dean felt her knee resting on his and looked over at Cas. 

It wasn’t like he wished it was Cas’ knee resting on his. Not exactly.

Well, yes exactly. But there was a perfectly good explanation. See, pretending to be dating someone for a year – spending every day with them – becoming so close to them that they knew everything you were thinking, everything except one small, sad, devastating thought–

The bottle slowed and stopped spinning, pointing at him. Dean’s mind snapped back into focus.

Cas’ eyes were on him, examining him in a guarded kind of way. Waiting to see what he would do, Dean realized when someone groaned and said,

“Come on, you’re dating. If Ruby and Balthazar could kiss, so can you.”

Dean swallowed, cleared his throat. The chandelier above them swayed. The room seemed to get a touch colder.

“Rather not,” he said slowly. An entire year of fake-dating and they’d managed to avoid having to kiss. He didn’t remember them doing anything more intimate than shaking hands in the duration of that year, and he wasn’t going to share the most private moment of his fake relationship with a roomful of his nosy friends. Cas’ expression didn’t change, but his jaw tightened. Dean couldn’t tell what he was thinking.

Someone snatched the bottle. “If you’re not going to play the game then don’t play the game,” Ruby muttered.

He held Cas’ eyes for as long as he could. Then he looked away.

He slipped away while Cas was distracted.

They weren’t supposed to do that. Fake relationship or not, the affection between them was real. They always stuck together, an unspoken rule. But Dean was cold. The balcony was warmer somehow than the inside of the house, although it was late at night and practically November. He took his fangs out and watched the moonlight reflect dully on the white plastic.

It didn’t take more than a few minutes for Cas to find him. He leaned on the balcony rail beside Dean; the wood groaned under the weight.

They listened to the night for a few moments.

“Childish game,” Cas said.

“Yeah.”

It wasn’t the comfortable silence they usually shared. There was tension under the surface, and it was felt. They always dropped their pretenses when they were alone, but this, now, didn’t quite feel like all pretenses were dropped. He turned abruptly to face Cas, only a touch setting them apart. Cas didn’t pull away; didn’t do anything but look into his eyes in the same guarded look he had before.

He leaned in. Watched Cas’ lips part. Whispered,

“Just to know what it feels like.”

A moment before they touched, Cas pulled away.

“Probably a bad idea,” he murmured.

Dean leaned back, nodded slowly. “Right.”

Cas cleared his throat, eyeing his shoes. “I’m going to go back inside.” 

He walked out, leaving Dean to process the fact that he’d just been rejected by someone who everyone thought he already had.

If there was tension under the surface before, Dean didn’t know what to call it now. It was certainly not under the surface anymore. They sat on an old couch that was practically disintegrating, one foot apart. Cas didn’t seem to be interested in making a scene in front of everyone to see, so whatever he was thinking, he didn’t say it.

He also didn’t seem interested in Dean.

He looked around, evidently searching for someone in the crowd. He didn’t have much else to do without his phone, which he’d given to Dean to be able to scroll aimlessly on social media because his own phone didn’t have reception in the house.

Dean tried to keep his eyes on the phone; the last thing he wanted to do right now was make eye contact.

It didn’t matter much. Cas didn’t look his way once. But the strange, detached atmosphere of the house, added to the stream of people passing by them, created some sense of cold isolation. So, when he felt a hand come to rest on his–

“You got a text,” he said and handed Cas back the phone. His eyes skimmed the message automatically. It was from a classmate.

_where u at? looking for u_

“Why is Hannah looking for you?” he asked.

Cas took the phone back, his expression reluctant. “She mentioned she might come.”

Dean watched his expression become more uncomfortable, more guarded. “She’s the one you’ve been waiting for.”

“No...” Cas reached for his hand again, but he pulled away too fast.

“You’ve been looking for her all night.”

“I wasn’t looking for her,” Cas insisted. Dean’s expression hardened.

“Got it,” he said, trying with all he had to keep his voice emotionless. “Not her. Just anyone who isn’t me.”

“You know that’s not true.”

“Sure.” Dean pursed his lips in an attempt for a smile and stood up. Cas rose after him.

“If you want to go home, we can go home.”

“It’s okay,” Dean patted his shoulder. “You can stay. I don’t want to spend the night with a guy who’d rather be with someone else.”

“Dean–”

But he was already gone. He carved his way through the crowd, away from Cas, like April had carved a path to him a year ago that led him to Cas in the first place.

Rejected a second time in one evening.

Cas followed him through the living room to the front door, calling his name over the voices of everyone else, and only caught up to him when Dean pulled the door handle.

It didn’t open.

He turned the key and tried again.

Locked.

“Dean.” Cas placed a hand on his back, between his shoulder blades, and he wanted to shake it off so badly that he almost thought he could break the door down if he tried. That was how bad he hated getting hurt. Being trapped inside this hurt.

Being trapped.

Getting as far away from Cas as he possibly could had been at the top of his priorities, but something stopped him now. Something in this locked door – stuck, barred, jammed shut – told him he should probably hold on. Tight.

He took Cas’ hand.

“Let’s search for a back exit.”

They found the back door, and it was locked as well.

“This isn’t good, is it?” he asked. Cas shook his head. They looked up at one another.

For a moment, it was how it used to be. Natural.

“Windows,” Cas said, but before they could do anything there was a rise in the voices coming from the living room, like a wave surging. They hurried to the living room in time to see lightbulbs snapping and furniture being thrust across the floor by an invisible force. The chandelier swung violently before ripping from the ceiling and crashing onto the floor in the center of the room. No more than a few inches away from it, Balthazar crouched on the floor, having just been yote aside by a heroic classmate. His leg was bleeding.

Everyone was quiet.

“I knew something was wrong with the chandelier,” Dean muttered. Someone murmured to his left in response, but when he turned, he didn’t see anyone. Somewhere, a window must’ve been opened; he felt the cold in his fingertips.

Cas squeezed his hand, and he squeezed back.

“Who the hell’s house is this?” Charlie asked, coming to stand on Dean’s other side.

“It was abandoned,” said Ruby.

“Perfect place to have a party,” Jo said, her voice hollow. “On Halloween. An old, deserted, murderous house.”

Cas shuffled closer.

“Dean?”

“Yeah.”

“I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”

Dean wished he had it in him to pretend to be strong.

“Me too.”

On the other side of the room, Garth tore the arm off a fake skeleton, bone fingers wiggling with every motion, and wiped spider webs off it. “Upstairs,” he said determinedly. He was dressed as Sheriff Woody. Dean let out a soft snort, but people already started filing up the stairs.

“You got a better idea?” Garth shot as he passed by them.

Dean didn’t.

Upstairs, they all squeezed into a room with a big window, another skeleton sitting in a rocking chair and a lit fireplace. Jo sat beside Dean, a metal pitchfork in hand.

“Do you think someone’s playing a prank on us?” The space was so packed that her right side was pressed against his left.

Dean looked over at Ruby wrapping bandages over Balthazar’s bleeding leg.

“Doubt it,” he said quietly. He followed Garth around the room with his eyes, trying to avoid a conversation from either side of him. After a moment, Jo got up to join Charlie in checking the window and the door. The window wouldn’t open. The door didn’t seem sturdy enough to block whatever was capable of dropping a crystal chandelier from the ceiling.

Garth came to stand above Dean. “You guys doing okay?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Dean muttered. He felt Cas’ eyes on him. He looked straight ahead. “Thanks, Garth.”

“You’re still mad?” Cas asked once Garth was gone.

Dean let out a deep sigh. “I’m not mad, Cas. I just... forget it.”

Cas’ eyebrows furrowed. Dean loved everything about him. He hated that about himself.

“What?”

“I can tell there’s something you’re not telling me, alright?”

Cas’ eyes slid off him. He didn’t need more proof that he was right. He knew Cas; he knew when he was real, and he knew when he wasn’t.

“Alright.” Cas swallowed and played absently with the hem of his sweater. If he ruined it Dean was going to kill him. “You want the truth?”

Everyone around them seemed too rattled to listen in on their conversation. Jo cracked the door open and stepped out, pitchfork in hand. She came back in after several moments with a cut on her forehead.

“I’d like the truth, yeah.”

“I didn’t want to go with you today.”

Dean looked up at him. “Oh.” _What?_ “Why?” _What?_

Cas shrugged stiffly. “The whole fake couple thing is getting kind of old,” he said, and he didn’t seem to mind whether anyone heard him.

Something in Dean’s stomach dropped. The words were bad; the fact that Cas was so certain of them that he didn’t even try to keep them private from the room was worse.

“Where is this coming from?” he asked. His throat was dry.

“It’s been a year,” Cas said. “We used to think it would only last a week. Don’t you think it went a little too far?”

Dean nodded, his expression blank. “Alright.”

Rejected. Again. He must be breaking some kind of record.

“Is there someone else...?” he asked reluctantly. He wasn’t sure he wanted to hear the answer.

“No.” Cas’ voice was soft, now, almost a whisper, but all the more passionate for it. “There's no one else but you.” He closed his eyes and took a short breath. “That came out wrong. I just mean it's not that. I'm just getting a little tired of pretending.”

“Alright,” Dean said again, weak, barely audible.

“Come on.” Cas nudged his arm. “We're best friends. It would be stupid to ruin our real relationship because of our fake one.”

“Yeah.” Dean looked down at his crossed legs. Cas was right; it was just going to take him a little bit of time to make his peace with that.

He wasn’t sure what he’d expected. It was silly to expect anything, really. But it being silly didn’t make not expecting any easier.

Dean looked up, then. With all the murmuring around the room, it took him a moment to realize what had caught his attention – but then it happened again.

Banging on the door.

The circle of teens around the door backed off, widening the empty space surrounding it.

The banging went silent.

Then a figure appeared inside the room.

Dean’s eyes shot to the door. It had stayed closed.

The figure stepped forward, and everyone else in the room stepped back. Someone threw a shoe at it, but it went straight through. Half the room stifled sounds of terror. The other half sighed in relief.

“It’s just a hologram.”

The figure watched them for a moment, and disappeared.

It reappeared in front of Dean.

Without lifting a finger, it shoved him aside with such force that he flew across the room and crashed his shoulder on a cabinet next to the fireplace. The figure dematerialized again and rematerialized in front of him, grabbed his leg, and pulled.

“Ahhh!” screamed Dean, more out of fear than out of pain. The pain erupted a moment later, when the figure twisted his foot. He felt a couple of people pull him away, and there was a crash, and a hiss. When Dean wiggled himself into a sitting position, a sharp pain shot up his foot. Garth and Cas were kneeling beside him, worried eyes on his injured leg. Jo was standing above him, metal pitchfork in hand, seeming to have just swung it at something. The figure was gone. Someone was lying at her feet, with a puddle of blood spreading around them. Dean leaned sideways as far as he could go to see who it was.

Ruby.

Cas touched his hand and pulled his attention from the body. “Are you alright?” He looked genuinely concerned.

Dean offered him half a shaky smile. “Yeah, I’m good.” He desperately hoped Cas wouldn't see through it.

Around them, people drained from the room like gushing water. In a moment of weakness, trying to ignore the pain that was shooting through his body – shoulder to toes – Dean's head tipped forward and his forehead came to rest on Cas’ shoulder.

Cas didn’t pull away.

He pulled Dean closer.

When someone tapped on Cas’ shoulder and he tore away, the pain in Dean’s body seemed to get twice as strong.

“Pass me that gross rag over there,” Garth said and gently started taking Dean’s shoe off. Cas handed him an old piece of cloth that was lying on the floor.

“I don’t need help,” Dean said, his face twitching in pain.

“Sure you don’t,” Garth said.

“Seriously,” Dean said when Garth took his sock off and started wrapping the old cloth around his ankle.

“Seriously,” Garth smiled at him pleasantly. “Trust me. I got a first aid course in third grade.”

“Where,” Dean wrinkled his nose. “Boy scouts?”

“Lucky guess.” Garth tucked the end of the rag into a fold in the construction. “It’s alright, Dean.” He put a hand on Dean's good shoulder and looked him in the eye in an uncomfortably friendly manner. “You can let go.”

“What in hell do you mean by that?”

Garth patted his shoulder and leaned back. “Why can’t you accept that you’re not the main character in this movie, Dean?”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Dean asked. “What movie?”

“Toy Story.” Garth looked at him strangely, as if the answer was obvious, and fixed his cowboy hat on his head. The look Dean returned him was just as bewildered.

“This is real life. It doesn’t get more real life than a demonic hologram almost bashing my head into goo.”

“Dean.” Cas tapped his shoulder. “We should go.”

“Actually, I’d really like to continue this argument. Garth–”

Cas pulled him up in one strenuous motion, and it was all Dean could do to cling on to him not to lose his balance and fall down.

“Movie or not, we’re going to die if we stay here.”

He was one moment too late. The figure materialized at the door, shooting Garth across the room, and advanced towards them. Cas directed them to the left, but furniture flew to block their way. The closer the figure got, the colder the air got around them. Dean really, really wished he could see a way out of this. He couldn’t take his eyes off the hologram demon, but the next time he heard Cas’ voice, it was quiet, and frightened.

“Dean?”

“Yeah?”

“Something bad is about to happen.”

He really wished he could say no. “Right.”

“I don't want something bad to happen without having told you...” Cas’ voice faltered. On the other side of the room, Garth stood up slowly, supporting himself on the skeleton’s armchair.

“Without having told you that I love you,” Cas finished.

Dean glanced sideways at him. “As a... friend.” He ran a hand through his no-longer slick hair. If at the beginning of the evening he’d looked like a fake vampire, he bet now, limping, with face white from pain and a dirty, torn cape, he looked more like a real one.

“No.” Without taking his eyes off the figure, Cas snatched a wooden box from a nearby cabinet. “I mean, yes. As a friend. But also not as a friend.”

Dean clenched his teeth, trying his best to keep his balance as he slowly retreated, stepping on his twisted foot again and again. “You didn't tell me that,” he grumbled. “You just said you wanted to stop pretending.”

“I did tell you,” Cas said, voice rising, and threw his box and the murderous hologram. It passed right through, and in return, he got a metal rod to the face that missed him by half an inch. “I told you a hundred times,” he said as he rolled away from the hologram, which was also away from Dean. “And I’m tired of hoping you’ll pick up on it and being disappointed when you don’t. It’s not working for me anymore.”

“What?” It came out a little weak, but Cas heard him. He tried to get to the metal rod without the hologram demon noticing. Metal seemed to be a weakness for it.

“I told you when...” Cas tried to grasp for words, so upset he could barely come up with them. “When I did my homework with you every day. I told you when I listened to all the songs you sent me that you thought I might like. When I went places with you after my curfew and had to sneak back through my window.” He was speaking quickly, almost rapidly, and Dean tried not to think about why he was so anxious to finish talking. The figure didn’t attack, though. Abruptly, it turned around and advanced towards Garth, who had moved the armchair in order to get to the fire.

 _Fire_ , Dean thought. _Good thinking._

“Every time I look at you I tell you,” Cas said desperately, picking up items around the room at random and throwing them at the hologram. “It's there in my eyes. In my voice. You just don't hear it. Maybe you don't want to hear it.”

“Why would I not want to hear it?” Dean shot back. “Why would I beg you to keep this up? Why would I get so hurt when you tried to back away?”

Several things happened at once in that moment.

Garth stuck a wooden board into the fire, then slipped and landed on his ass in the skeleton’s lap.

The figure attacked, throwing him away like a rag doll, but only after he’d managed to throw the board in Dean’s direction. Dean dropped the metal rod to catch the chunk of flaming wood flying his way, and he caught it, and threw it at the figure, which dematerialized and reappeared much closer to him.

The burning board hit the armchair and landed on the skeleton sitting in it. It started burning.

And then the figure burned.

With a distasteful amount of screeching and screaming, and a burst of flame, the figure was gone.

“What did you do?” Cas breathed.

Dean watched the skeleton burn in its armchair slowly, nonchalantly. “I don’t know,” he said, perplexed, eyebrows pulling together. “But it worked.”

“We should go,” Cas said. He was right. If they didn’t put out the fire, soon the whole house would burn. And Dean didn’t think he’d seen one non-alcoholic liquid in the house that could help smother the flames. 

Cas rushed over to Garth’s side, and Dean limped to join them. With some effort, Garth got to his feet.

“What’d I miss?”

“We killed the evil hologram,” Dean started, “And now the house is burning do–”

“No time,” said Cas. They left the house limping, aching, bloody.

“We’ll give you a ride,” Dean told Garth, and handed Cas his keys. His ankle wouldn’t allow him to drive for a while.

They didn’t look back as they walked to the car. Cas wrapped his arm under Dean’s shoulder, supporting him. They didn’t have to speak to know that they were on the same page. Never had.

It felt so much the same as it was before. That was the best part.

“I lost my fangs,” Dean said, touching his tongue to his teeth. The whole world was quiet except for the sound of their feet on the asphalt.

“I lost my grasp on reality,” Garth murmured.

Cas let out a small sigh, tilted his body slightly, and took more of Dean’s weight onto his shoulder. And they walked, like that, into the night.


End file.
